David H. Rose

David Rose is a developmental neuropsychologist and educator whose primary focus is on the development of new technologies for learning.

In 1984, Dr. Rose co-founded CAST, a not-for-profit research and development organization whose mission is to improve education, for all learners, through innovative uses of modern multimedia technology and contemporary research in the cognitive neurosciences. That work has grown into a new field called Universal Design for Learning which now influences educational policy and practice throughout the United States and many other countries. Dr. Rose has also taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for over three decades.

As a researcher, Dr. Rose has been the Principal Investigator on many U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation grants, most of them related to advancing the ideas and practices of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). With the increasing prominence of UDL as a field, Dr. Rose has become a frequent keynote speaker at national and international conferences.

He has authored dozens of journal articles and academic book chapters and is the author of several books, including Universal Design for Learning: Theory & Practice (CAST Professional Publishing, 2014) and Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning (ASCD, 2002). Dr. Rose also leads or participates in many of CAST's technology and media development projects that have resulted in programs that are both award-winning and commercially successful including: Literary Place (Scholastic); Wiggleworks; (Scholastic); Thinking Reader (Tom Snyder/Scholastic); CAST’s Bobby (now distributed by IBM); AMP Reading System (Pearson).

Dr. Rose has worked as a consultant for Houghton-Mifflin, Scholastic, Tom Snyder Productions, EBSCO Publishing, Pearson, Sopris West, WGBH, PBS, and other producers and publishers. He has also testified before the U.S. Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee and regularly advises state departments of education on policies related to the education of students with disabilities and designing universally designed educational systems.

With his CAST colleagues, he has won numerous awards, including the Computerworld/Smithsonian Award for Innovation in Education and Academia (1993), Tech Museum of Innovation Award (2002), the EdNET HERO Award (2005), the Strache Leadership Award (2014), and the CEC J.E. Wallace Wallin Special Education Lifetime Achievement Award (2017). In 2004, the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Edutopia magazine named him one of education's "Daring Dozen" and he has recently been honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change.” Dr. Rose retired from CAST in 2017 but continues to consult and teach in an emeritus role.